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Wednesday, 20 April 2016

Alnmouth and The Huffy House

Saturdau night we went to bed at the ridiculously early hour of 8.30pm so on Sunday morning we got up early and were on the beach
before ten. The minor road heading to the sand was so rocky that we thought
we'd got the wrong road, but we saw other cars, and continued at a speed of
something like ten miles an hour. Once we got to the beach that runs south from Alnmouth to Warkworth,
we decided it was worth it as the beach looked magnificent. We walked as far as
Birling Carrs where the rocks run out to meet the waves of an
in-coming tide. I wore my trainers and dh wore his wellies, which meant he
could wade through the shallows while I stuck to the dry sand. In turn, that
meant that Tim ran from one to the other and no doubt trebled his mileage!

Then it was off to the supermarket in Alnwick to stock up
on necessaries for the next few days. After that it was back to the Huffy House
for lunch and a well earned rest before venturing out again to the beach north
of Alnmouth. More sand and more waves but somehow subtly different from this morning. Tim is tired tonight, and sleeping quietly. My knees ache with all
this walking, but as soon as I move around, they loosen up. I took photographs,
but because I couldn't upload them from my camera to my iPad, I was stuck. If I'd taken
them on my phone I could have done so, but the picture quality would not have been so good.
Dilemma. (But now sorted as I am back home and using all the correct equipment!)

The Huffy House was once Rosie's pig sty and the old
netty. It began its transformation in 2006 and finally opened for guests in
2013 - utterly transformed, I might add.. It is not far from Alnmouth, the
oldest port in Northumberland founded in 1150 by William de Vesci, Lord of Alnwick. A charter from King Johnis dated 1207. The town was almost
destroyed by Scots in 1336 and by the Black Death twelve years later, so severe a disease that a third of the population died.

On Christmas Eve 1806 a storm hit the county, The river Aln flooded to such an extent that it created a new, shorter route
to the sea which meant Church Hill was cut off from the town. The change was a death blow to
the port as the new route was difficult for shipping, being much shallower than
the old route. Railways dealt the final blow as goods travelled via rail instead of ship, The railways also brought tourists in growing numbers and Alnmouth became a Victorian favourite destination. There
is a story that Charles Dickens visited
regularly, presumably to visit his cousin since he proposed to her. Unfortunately she was actually pregnant by a seafarer.
Rejected, Dickens left Alnmouth. That same night the ship carrying the
seafarer went down with all hands. How
true that story is, I don't know.

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About Jen

Welcome to my blog-cum-website! My stories are often set in Scotland, Dublin or the north of England. I like reading suspenseful novels with the tang of adventure as well as romance, so my books aim to include all three themes. I'm rarely without a camera in my pocket and most of the pics on my blog are mine. My home is in the beautiful Tyne Valley midway between Hexham and Newcastle.